Timon of Athens

TIMON,
a lord of Athens, in the enjoyment of a
princely fortune, affected a humour of liberality
which knew no limits. His almost infinite wealth
could not flow in so fast, but he poured it out
faster upon all sorts and degrees of people. Not
the poor only tasted of his bounty, but great
lords did not disdain to rank themselves among his
dependents and followers. His table was resorted
to by all the luxurious feasters, and his house
was open to all comers and goers at Athens. His
large wealth combined with his free and prodigal
nature to subdue all hearts to his love; men of
all minds and dispositions tendered their services
to lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer,
whose face reflects as in a mirror the present
humour of his patron, to the rough and unbending
cynic, who affecting a contempt of men's persons,
and an indifference to worldly things, yet could
not stand out against the gracious manners and
munificent soul of lord Timon, but would come
(against his nature) to partake of his royal
entertainments, and return most rich in his own
estimation if he had received a nod or a
salutation from Timon.

If a poet had composed a work which wanted a
recommendatory introduction to the world, he had
no more to do but to dedicate it to lord Timon,
and the poem was sure of sale, besides a present
purse from the patron, and daily access to his
house and table. If a painter had a picture to
dispose of, he had only to take it to lord Timon,
and pretend to consult his taste as to the merits
of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the
liberal-hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweller had
a stone of price, or a mercer rich costly stuffs,
which for their costliness lay upon his hands,
lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open,
where they might get off their wares or their
jewellery at any price, and the good-natured lord
would thank them into the bargain, as if they had
done him a piece of courtesy in letting him have
the refusal of such precious commodities. So that
by this means his house was thronged with
superfluous purchases, of no use but to swell
uneasy and ostentatious pomp; and his person was
still more inconveniently beset with a crowd of
these idle visitors, lying poets, painters,
sharking tradesmen, lords, ladies, needy
courtiers, and expectants, who continually filled
his lobbies, raining their fulsome flatteries in
whispers in his ears, sacrificing to him with
adulation as to a God, making sacred the very
stirrup by which he mounted his horse, and seeming
as though they drank the free air but through his
permission and bounty.

Some of these daily dependents were young men
of birth, who (their means not answering to their
extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors,
and redeemed thence by lord Timon; these young
prodigals thenceforward fastened upon his
lordship, as if by common sympathy he were
necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and
loose livers, who, not being able to follow him in
his wealth, found it easier to copy him in
prodigality and copious spending of what was their
own. One of these flesh-flies was Ventidius, for
whose debts, unjustly contracted, Timon but lately
had paid down the sum of five talents.

But among this confluence, this great flood of
visitors, none were more conspicuous than the
makers of presents and givers of gifts. It was
fortunate for these men if Timon took a fancy to a
dog or a horse, or any piece of cheap furniture
which was theirs. The thing so praised, whatever
it was, was sure to be sent the next morning with
the compliments of the giver for lord Timon's
acceptance, and apologies for the unworthiness of
the gift; and this dog or horse, or whatever it
might be, did not fail to produce from Timon's
bounty, who would not be outdone in gifts, perhaps
twenty dogs or horses, certainly presents of far
richer worth, as these pretended donors knew well
enough, and that their false presents were but the
putting out of so much money at large and speedy
interest. In this way lord Lucius had lately sent
to Timon a present of four milk-white horses,
trapped in silver, which this cunning lord had
observed Timon upon some occasion to commend; and
another lord, Lucullus, had bestowed upon him in
the same pretended way of free gift a brace of
greyhounds, whose make and fleetness Timon had
been heard to admire; these presents the
easy-hearted lord accepted without suspicion of
the dishonest views of the presenters; and the
givers of course were rewarded with some rich
return, a diamond or some jewel of twenty times
the value of their false and mercenary donation.

Sometimes these creatures would go to work in
a more direct way, and with gross and palpable
artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too
blind to see, would affect to admire and praise
something that Timon possessed, a bargain that he
had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure
to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a
gift of the thing commended, for no service in the
world done for it but the easy expense of a little
cheap and obvious flattery. In this way Timon but
the other day had given to one of these mean lords
the bay courser which he himself rode upon,
because his lordship had been pleased to say that
it was a handsome beast and went well; and Timon
knew that no man ever justly praised what he did
not wish to possess. For lord Timon weighed his
friends" affection with his own, and so fond
was he of bestowing, that he could have dealt
kingdoms to these supposed friends, and never have
been weary.

Not that Timon's wealth all went to enrich
these wicked flatterers; he could do noble and
praiseworthy actions; and when a servant of his
once loved the daughter of a rich Athenian, but
could not hope to obtain her by reason that in
wealth and rank the maid was so far above him,
lord Timon freely bestowed upon his servant three
Athenian talents, to make his fortune equal with
the dowry which the father of the young maid
demanded of him who should be her husband. But
for the most part, knaves and parasites had the
command of his fortune, false friends whom he did
not know to be such, but, because they flocked
around his person, he thought they must needs love
him; and because they smiled and flattered him, he
thought surely that his conduct was approved by
all the wise and good. And when he was feasting
in the midst of all these flatterers and mock
friends, when they were eating him up, and
draining his fortunes dry with large draughts of
richest wines drunk to his health and prosperity,
he could not perceive the difference of a friend
from a flatterer, but to his deluded eyes (made
proud with the sight) it seemed a precious comfort
to have so many like brothers commanding one
another's fortunes (though it was his own fortune
which paid all the costs), and with joy they would
run over at the spectacle of such, as it appeared
to him, truly festive and fraternal meeting.

But while he thus outwent the very heart of
kindness, and poured out his bounty, as if Plutus,
the god of gold, had been but his steward; while
thus he proceeded without care or stop, so
senseless of expense that he would neither inquire
how he could maintain it, nor cease his wild flow
of riot; his riches, which were not infinite, must
needs melt away before a prodigality which knew no
limits. But who should tell him so? his
flatterers? they had no interest in shutting his
eyes. In vain did his honest steward Flavius try
to represent to him his condition, laying his
accounts before him, begging of him, praying of
him, with an importunity that on any other
occasion would have been unmannerly in a servant,
beseeching him with tears to look into the state
of his affairs. Timon would still put him off,
and turn the discourse to something else; for
nothing is so deaf to remonstrance as riches
turned to poverty, nothing is so unwilling to
believe its situation, nothing so incredulous to
its own true state, and hard to give credit to a
reverse. Often had this good steward, this honest
creature, when all the rooms of Timon's great
house have been choked up with riotous feeders at
his master's cost, when the floors have wept with
drunken spilling of wine, and every apartment has
blazed with lights and resounded with music and
feasting, often had he retired by himself to some
solitary spot, and wept faster than the wine ran
from the wasteful casks within, to see the mad
bounty of his lord, and to think, when the means
were gone which brought him praises from all sorts
of people, how quickly the breath would be gone of
which the praise was made; praises won in feasting
would be lost in feasting, and at one cloud of
winter-showers these flies would disappear.

But now the time was come that Timon could
shut his ears no longer to the representations of
this faithful steward. Money must be had; and
when he ordered Flavius to sell some of his land
for that purpose, Flavius informed him, what he
had in vain endeavoured at several times before to
make him listen to, that most of his land was
already sold or forfeited, and that all he
possessed at present was not enough to pay the one
half of what he owed. Struck with wonder at this
presentation, Timon hastily replied: "My
lands extend from Athens to Lacedaemon."
"O my good lord," said Flavius,
"the world is but a world, and has bounds;
were it all yours to give in a breath, how quickly
were it gone!"

Timon consoled himself that no villanous
bounty had yet come from him, that if he had given
his wealth away unwisely, it had not been bestowed
to feed his vices, but to cherish his friends; and
he made the kind-hearted steward (who was weeping)
to take comfort in the assurance that his master
could never lack means, while he had so many noble
friends; and this infatuated lord persuaded
himself that he had nothing to do but to send and
borrow, to use every man's fortune (that had ever
tasted his bounty) in this extremity, as freely as
his own. Then with a cheerful look, as if
confident of the trial, he severally despatched
messengers to lord Lucius, to lords Lucullus and
Sempronius, men upon whom he had lavished his
gifts in past times without measure or moderation;
and to Ventidius, whom he had lately released out
of prison by paying his debts, and who, by the
death of his father, was now come into the
possession of an ample fortune, and well enabled
to requite Timon's courtesy: to request of
Ventidius the return of those five talents which
he had paid for him, and of each of those noble
lords the loan of fifty talents; nothing doubting
that their gratitude would supply his wants (if he
needed it) to the amount of five hundred times
fifty talents.

Lucullus was the first applied to. This mean
lord had been dreaming overnight of a silver bason
and cup, and when Timon's servant was announced,
his sordid mind suggested to him that this was
surely a making out of his dream, and that Timon
had sent him such a present: but when he
understood the truth of the matter, and that Timon
wanted money, the quality of his faint and watery
friendship showed itself, for with many
protestations he vowed to the servant that he had
long foreseen the ruin of his master's affairs,
and many a time had he come to dinner to tell him
of it, and had come again to supper to try to
persuade him to spend less, but he would take no
counsel nor warning by his coming: and true it was
that he had been a constant attender (as he said)
at Timon's feasts, as he had in greater things
tasted his bounty; but that he ever came with that
intent, or gave good counsel or reproof to Timon,
was a base unworthy lie, which he suitably
followed up with meanly offering the servant a
bribe, to go home to his master and tell him that
he had not found Lucullus at home.

As little success had the messenger who was
sent to lord Lucius. This lying lord, who was
full of Timon's meat, and enriched almost to
bursting with Timon's costly presents, when he
found the wind changed, and the fountain of so
much bounty suddenly stopped, at first could
hardly believe it; but on its being confirmed, he
affected great regret that he should not have it
in his power to serve lord Timon, for
unfortunately (which was a base falsehood) he had
made a great purchase the day before, which had
quite disfurnished him of the means at present,
the more beast he, he called himself, to put it
out of his power to serve so good a friend; and he
counted it one of his greatest afflictions that
his ability should fail him to pleasure such an
honourable gentleman.

Who can call any man friend that dips in the
same dish with him? just of this metal is every
flatterer. In the recollection of everybody Timon
had been a father to this Lucius, had kept up his
credit with his purse; Timon's money had gone to
pay the wages of his servants, to pay the hire of
the labourers who had sweat to build the fine
houses which Lucius's pride had made necessary to
him: yet, oh! the monster which man makes himself
when he proves ungrateful! this Lucius now denied
to Timon a sum, which, in respect of what Timon
had bestowed on him, was less than charitable men
afford to beggars.

Sempronius, and every one of these mercenary
lords to whom Timon applied in their turn,
returned the same evasive answer or direct denial;
even Ventidius, the redeemed and now rich
Ventidius, refused to assist him with the loan of
those five talents which Timon had not lent but
generously given him in his distress.

Now was Timon as much avoided in his poverty
as he had been courted and resorted to in his
riches. Now the same tongues which had been
loudest in his praises, extolling him as
bountiful, liberal, and open handed, were not
ashamed to censure that very bounty as folly, that
liberality as profuseness, though it had shown
itself folly in nothing so truly as in the
selection of such unworthy creatures as themselves
for its objects. Now was Timon's princely mansion
forsaken, and become a shunned and hated place, a
place for men to pass by, not a place, as
formerly, where every passenger must stop and
taste of his wine and good cheer; now, instead of
being thronged with feasting and tumultuous
guests, it was beset with impatient and clamorous
creditors, usurers, extortioners, fierce and
intolerable in their demands, pleading bonds,
interest, mortgages; iron-hearted men that would
take no denial nor putting off, that Timon's house
was now his jail, which he could not pass, nor go
in nor out for them; one demanding his due of
fifty talents, another bringing in a bill of five
thousand crowns, which if he would tell out his
blood by drops, and pay them so, he had not enough
in his body to discharge, drop by drop.

In this desperate and irremediable state (as
it seemed) of his affairs, the eyes of all men
were suddenly surprised at a new and incredible
lustre which this setting sun put forth. Once
more lord Timon proclaimed a feast, to which he
invited his accustomed guests, lords, ladies, all
that was great or fashionable in Athens. Lord
Lucius and Lucullus came, Ventidius, Sempronius,
and the rest. Who more sorry now than these
fawning wretches, when they found (as they
thought) that Lord Timon's poverty was all
pretence, and had been only to make trial of their
loves, to think that they should not have seen
through the artifice at the time, and have had the
cheap credit of obliging his lordship? yet who
more glad to find the fountain of that noble
bounty, which they had thought dried up, still
fresh and running? They came dissembling,
protesting, expressing deepest sorrow and shame,
that when his lordship sent to them, they should
have been so unfortunate as to want the present
means to oblige so honourable a friend. But Timon
begged them not to give such trifles a thought,
for he had altogether forgotten it. And these
base fawning lords, though they had denied him
money in his adversity, yet could not refuse their
presence at this new blaze of his returning
prosperity. For the swallow follows not summer
more willingly than men of these dispositions
follow the good fortunes of the great, nor more
willingly leaves winter than these shrink from the
first appearance of a reverse; such summer birds
are men. But now with music and state the banquet
of smoking dishes was served up; and when the
guests had a little done admiring whence the
bankrupt Timon could find means to furnish so
costly a feast, some doubting whether the scene
which they saw was real, as scarce trusting their
own eyes; at a signal given, the dishes were
uncovered, and Timon's drift appeared: instead of
those varieties and far-fetched dainties which
they expected, that Timon's epicurean table in
past times had so liberally presented, now
appeared under the covers of these dishes a
preparation more suitable to Timon's poverty,
nothing but a little smoke and lukewarm water, fit
feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose
professions were indeed smoke, and their hearts
lukewarm and slippery as the water with which
Timon welcomed his astonished guests, bidding
them, "Uncover, dogs, and lap"; and before
they could recover their surprise, sprinkling it
in their faces, that they might have enough, and
throwing dishes and all after them, who now ran
huddling out, lords, ladies, with their caps
snatched up in haste, a splendid confusion, Timon
pursuing them, still calling them what they were,
"smooth smiling parasites, destroyers under
the mask of courtesy, affable wolves, meek bears,
fools of fortune, feast-friends, time-flies."
They, crowding out to avoid him, left the house
more willingly than they had entered it; some
losing their gowns and caps, and some their jewels
in the hurry, all glad to escape out of the
presence of such a mad lord, and from the ridicule
of his mock banquet.

This was the last feast which ever Timon made,
and in it he took farewell of Athens and the
society of men; for, after that, he betook himself
to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city
and upon all mankind, wishing the walls of that
detestable city might sink, and the houses fall
upon their owners, wishing all plagues which
infest humanity, war, outrage, poverty, diseases,
might fasten upon its inhabitants, praying the
just gods to confound all Athenians, both young
and old, high and low; so wishing, he went to the
woods, where he said he should find the unkindest
beast much kinder than mankind. He stripped
himself naked, that he might retain no fashion of
a man, and dug a cave to live in, and lived
solitary in the manner of a beast, eating the wild
roots, and drinking water, flying from the face of
his kind, and choosing rather to herd with wild
beasts, as more harmless and friendly than man.

What a change from lord Timon the rich, lord
Timon the delight of mankind, to Timon the naked,
Timon the man-hater! Where were his flatterers
now? Where were his attendants and retinue?
Would the bleak air, that boisterous servitor, be
his chamberlain, to put his shirt on warm? Would
those stiff trees that had outlived the eagle,
turn young and airy pages to him, to skip on his
errands when he bade them? Would the cool brook,
when it was iced with winter, administer to him
his warm broths and caudles when sick of an
overnight's surfeit? Or would the creatures that
lived in those wild woods come and lick his hand
and flatter him?

Here on a day, when he was digging for roots,
his poor sustenance, his spade struck against
something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great
heap which some miser had probably buried in a
time of alarm, thinking to have come again. and
taken it from its prison, but died before the
opportunity had arrived, without making any man
privy to the concealment; so it lay, doing neither
good nor harm, in the bowels of the earth, its
mother, as if it had never come from thence, till
the accidental striking of Timon's spade against
it once more brought it to light.

Here was a mass of treasure which, if Timon
had retained his old mind, was enough to have
purchased him friends and flatterers again; but
Timon was sick of the false world, and the sight
of gold was poisonous to his eyes; and he would
have restored it to the earth, but that, thinking
of the infinite calamities which by means of gold
happen to mankind, how the lucre of it causes
robberies, oppression, injustice, briberies,
violence, and murder, among men, he had a pleasure
in imagining (such a rooted hatred did he bear to
his species) that out of this heap, which in
digging he had discovered, might arise some
mischief to plague mankind. And some soldiers
passing through the woods near to his cave at that
instant, which proved to be a part of the troops
of the Athenian captain Alcibiades, who upon some
disgust taken against the senators of Athens (the
Athenians were ever noted to be a thankless and
ungrateful people, giving disgust to their
generals and best friends), was marching at the
head of the same triumphant army which he had
formerly headed in their defence, to war against
them; Timon, who liked their business well,
bestowed upon their captain the gold to pay his
soldiers, requiring no other service from him,
than that he should with his conquering army lay
Athens level with the ground, and burn, slay, kill
all her inhabitants; not sparing the old men for
their white beards, for (he said) they were
usurers, nor the young children for their seeming
innocent smiles, for those (he said) would live,
if they grew up, to be traitors; but to steel his
eyes and ears against any sights or sounds that
might awaken compassion; and not to let the cries
of virgins, babes, or mothers. hinder him from
making one universal massacre of the city, but to
confound them all in his conquest; and when he had
conquered, he prayed that the gods would confound
him also, the conqueror: so thoroughly did Timon
hate Athens, Athenians, and all mankind.

While he lived in this forlorn state, leading
a life more brutal than human, he was suddenly
surprised one day with the appearance of a man
standing in an admiring posture at the door of his
cave. It was Flavius, the honest steward, whom
love and zealous affection to his master had led
to seek him out at his wretched dwelling, and to
offer his services; and the first sight of his
master, the once noble Timon, in that abject
condition, naked as he was born, living in the
manner of a beast among beasts, looking like his
own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so affected
this good servant, that he stood speechless,
wrapped up in horror, and confounded. And when he
found utterance at last to his words, they were so
choked with tears, that Timon had much ado to know
him again, or to make out who it was that had come
(so contrary to the experience he had had of
mankind) to offer him service in extremity. And
being in the form and shape of a man, he suspected
him for a traitor, and his tears for false; but
the good servant by so many tokens confirmed the
truth of his fidelity, and made it clear that
nothing but love and zealous duty to his once dear
master had brought him there, that Timon was
forced to confess that the world contained one
honest man; yet, being in the shape and form of a
man, he could not look upon his man's face without
abhorrence, or hear words uttered from his man's
lips without loathing; and this singly honest man
was forced to depart, because he was a man, and
because, with a heart more gentle and
compassionate than is usual to man, he bore man's
detested form and outward feature.

But greater visitants than a poor steward were
about to interrupt the savage quiet of Timon's
solitude. For now the day was come when the
ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the
injustice which they had done to the noble Timon.
For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild boar, was
raging at the walls of their city, and with his
hot siege threatened to lay fair Athens in the
dust. And now the memory of lord Timon's former
prowess and military conduct came fresh into their
forgetful minds, for Timon had been their general
in past times, and a valiant and expert soldier,
who alone of all the Athenians was deemed able to
cope with a besieging army such as then threatened
them, or to drive back the furious approaches of
Alcibiades.

A deputation of the senators was chosen in
this emergency to wait upon Timon. To him they
come in their extremity, to whom, when he was in
extremity they had shown but small regard; as if
they presumed upon his gratitude whom they had
disobliged, and had derived a claim to his
courtesy from their own most discourteous and
unpiteous treatment.

Now they earnestly beseech him, implore him
with tears, to return and save that city, from
which their ingratitude had so lately driven him;
now they offer him riches, power, dignities,
satisfaction for past injuries, and public
honours, and the public love; their persons,
lives, and fortunes, to be at his disposal, if he
will but come back and save them. But Timon the
naked, Timon the man-hater, was no longer lord
Timon, the lord of bounty, the flower of valour,
their defence in war, their ornament in peace. If
Alcibiades killed his countrymen, Timon cared not.
If he sacked fair Athens, and slew her old men and
her infants, Timon would rejoice. So he told
them; and that there was not a knife in the unruly
camp which he did not prize above the reverendest
throat in Athens.

This was all the answer he vouchsafed to the
weeping disappointed senators; only at parting he
bade them commend him to his countrymen, and tell
them, that to ease them of their griefs and
anxieties, and to prevent the consequences of
fierce Alcibiades' wrath, there was yet a way
left, which he would teach them, for he had yet so
much affection left for his dear countrymen as to
be willing to do them a kindness before his death.
These words a little revived the senators, who
hoped that his kindness for their city was
returning. Then Timon told them that he had a
tree, which grew near his cave, which he should
shortly have occasion to cut down, and he invited
all his friends in Athens, high or low, of what
degree soever, who wished to shun affliction, to
come and take a taste of his tree before he cut it
down; meaning, that they might come and hang
themselves on it, and escape affliction that way.

And this was the last courtesy of all his
noble bounties, which Timon showed to mankind, and
this the last sight of him which his countrymen
had: for not many days after, a poor soldier,
passing by the sea-beach, which was at a little
distance from the woods which Timon frequented,
found a tomb on the verge of the sea, with an
inscription upon it, purporting that it was the
grave of Timon the manhater, who "While he
lived, did hate all living men, and dying wished a
plague might consume all caitiffs left!"

Whether he finished his life by violence, or
whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he
had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion,
was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of
his epitaph, and the consistency of his end;
dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind: and
some there were who fancied a conceit in the very
choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his
place of burial, where the vast sea might weep for
ever upon his grave, as in contempt of the
transient and shallow tears of hypocritical and
deceitful mankind.